When Hari Kunzru’s fourth novel, Gods Without Men, was published in 2011, it represented both a high point and an endpoint in the author’s career. The book is a kaleidoscopic work that teems with life, bursts with inventiveness, and brims with chaotic energy. The multistoried narrative plays out in and around the Mojave Desert in […]
On the first Monday of May, Anna Wintour offered a rare apology. Although her annual Met Gala made money for the Costume Institute’s marquee exhibit, “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion,” Wintour asked the guest list of influencers and billionaires to dress in accordance with the theme “Garden of Time.” “When we came up with the title […]
Nothing quite says a city is safe like having to reroute a holiday parade to avoid reported violence in the area. Prior to last year, Chicago hadn’t held a Cinco de Mayo parade since 2017. This year’s parade should have signaled a truly triumphant return to normalcy but turned out to be more of a […]
Last decade, when student protests flared up at places like the University of Missouri and censorious students at places like Michigan and Middlebury shouted down and mobbed speakers they disagreed with, it was common for critics to shake their heads and say wait until they get into the real world. We have since learned that […]
Napoleon supposedly said that when China rises, the world will quake. The tremors are already being felt. The United States is at a “critical inflection point,” according to Dmitri Alperovitch and Garrett Graff in their new book, World on the Brink: How America Can Beat China in the Race for the Twenty-First Century. We have […]
Children are not being born in sufficient numbers to prevent the population from shrinking. But federal bookkeepers who track our nation’s finances are in denial about it. The birth dearth is a ticking financial time bomb that will hurt everyone unless our demographic decline is reversed. The two largest social insurance programs, Social Security and […]
The Senate passed legislation Thursday authorizing the Federal Aviation Administration for the next five years over the objections of Virginia and Maryland Democrats who sought to block a provision adding ten additional flights into or out of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
When a writer for Ebony magazine referred to Kamala Harris’s “historical” visit to Ghana and CNN aired a report on the same “historical” trip, they didn’t mean the visit had happened in the past. They meant it was the first by an African American vice president — historic. To err is human, of course, though […]
If you ever find yourself between two married people who are in the middle of an argument, the best strategy is to become suddenly interested in your shoes. Married people, of course, know this instinctively. But unmarried people like me have a hard time remembering it. We often imagine that the two married people who […]